Price cut on Mel Gibson's former Greenwich home

Price cut on Mel Gibson's former Greenwich home

Maggie Gordon

Updated
1:56 pm EST, Wednesday, January 27, 2016

The property at 124 Old Mill Rd. in Greenwich, Conn. Thursday, Jan. 15,
2015. The 15,862 sq. ft. house on 75.7 acres was formerly owned by
movie star Mel Gibson and went on the market for $31.5 million in January 2015. The current asking price is $25,750,000.
The mansion built in 1926 has 15 bedrooms, 10 full- and seven
half-baths, a pool, movie theater, tennis court, stables, pond, outdoor
hedge maze and life-sized outdoor chess board. less

The property at 124 Old Mill Rd. in Greenwich, Conn. Thursday, Jan. 15,
2015. The 15,862 sq. ft. house on 75.7 acres was formerly owned by
movie star Mel Gibson and went on the market for $31.5 million in ... more

Photo: Zillow

Photo: Zillow

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The property at 124 Old Mill Rd. in Greenwich, Conn. Thursday, Jan. 15,
2015. The 15,862 sq. ft. house on 75.7 acres was formerly owned by
movie star Mel Gibson and went on the market for $31.5 million in January 2015. The current asking price is $25,750,000.
The mansion built in 1926 has 15 bedrooms, 10 full- and seven
half-baths, a pool, movie theater, tennis court, stables, pond, outdoor
hedge maze and life-sized outdoor chess board. less

The property at 124 Old Mill Rd. in Greenwich, Conn. Thursday, Jan. 15,
2015. The 15,862 sq. ft. house on 75.7 acres was formerly owned by
movie star Mel Gibson and went on the market for $31.5 million in ... more

Photo: Zillow

Price cut on Mel Gibson's former Greenwich home

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Tucked away in backcountry Greenwich, a 75-acre property once home to Mel Gibson is still on the market, at an asking price of $25,750,000 million for one of Greenwich's "Great Estates." The house went on the market in January of 2015 at an asking price of $31.5 million.

The property, known as Old Mill Farm, is crowned with a Tudor-style manor home, first built as a country gentleman's estate in 1926. While the mansion spans more than 15,000 square feet, boasting 15 bedrooms, 10 full bathrooms and seven half bathrooms, it's the great hall past the main entrance that makes the most opulent statement. With 40-foot cathedral ceilings done in half-timber, stone walls, 17th-century paneling and light bursting through stained glass, it's what owner Margrit Strohmaier called "a party room" in 2015.

Strohmaier and her husband, Stamford attorney Richard Lichter, bought the estate from Gibson in 2010 for a little less than $24 million, according to property records on file at Greenwich Town Hall. The plan was to turn Old Mill Farm into a retirement home for the family, but after five years, Strohmaier said she realized they may not be the right people for the house.

In 2015, Hearst interviewed the couple:

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"We love it, and I've restored it in the way I wanted it, as if I was to live here forever," Strohmaier told Greenwich Time in 2015. She is an interior decorator who spent a year redesigning the home, which included hand-picking marble to be brought over from Europe for upstairs bathrooms and brightening up the aesthetic on the main floor.

"But we realized this is a true party house," she said.

While the Gibsons were known for lavish fetes with scores of guests, and the owner said inquiries were made about having former first daughter Chelsea Clinton's July 2010 wedding there, Strohmaier said she and her family are more reserved.

"We're kind of private, we realized," she said. "We have some friends over, one-on-one, but we don't throw parties every weekend, and this house needs life."

Tamar Lurie of Coldwell Banker picked up the listing in November 2014, though the Strohmaiers had it on the market earlier, for an asking price of $29 million.

It's a difficulty seen before with Greenwich's centerpiece estates. Take the former home of hotel maven Leona Helmsley, which sold for $35 million in 2010 -- less than one-third of its original asking price -- following two years on the market. The Helmsley estate is up for sale again, having listed over the summer with a new $65 million asking price after three years of renovations.

Big estates don't have the following they used to, noted Bill Andruss, an agent with Sotheby's, who last year listed a sprawling, Italian-style mansion dubbed "Buena Vista," which quickly sold to a developer who tore it down to make room for a subdivision.

"It's a challenge to find someone who wants to live like that today," Andruss said. "People's lives are busy. Sometimes you have families where both the husband and the wife are working, and I don't know if some of these big, old homes fit in with today's style of living."

Comparing Old Mill Farm with other large properties is hard to do, though, since so few places like it still exist. With 75 acres still intact, and the main house, built of 16-inch-thick stone, looking like it would be more at home in the English countryside than 45 minutes outside of Manhattan, listing agent Lurie said, "there's just nothing else like it in Greenwich."

Profiled as one of Greenwich's "Great Estates" in the locally lauded book of that title published by the Greenwich Junior League in 1986, the home's history has been well documented. Architect Lewis Bowman, who was known for his skill in Jacobean and Elizabethan styles, was awarded a medal by the Greenwich Board of Trade in 1931, citing Old Mill Farm as one of his outstanding achievements for both its interior and the entire estate's plan.

These days, the property is smaller than its original 137-acre footprint, but still features a stable with six horse stalls, a working greenhouse and chicken coop, as well as a hedge maze and life-size outdoor chess board, which Strohmaier said were designed when the Gibsons called it home.

Even as tastes change, and the town's "Great Estates" dwindle in number or linger on the market, Lurie said she thinks the right buyer for Old Mill Farm is out there.

"Someone who is looking for a contemporary is not going to like this house," Lurie said as she stood in the great hall, in front of a walk-in fireplace. "It has to be someone who is going to fall in love with the house and all it has to offer. A one-of-a-kind buyer, because this is a one-of-a-kind property."